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How to detect browser spoofing and robots from a user agent string in php

Asked 2012-11-14T03:57:15.517
9

So far I am able to detect robots from a list of user agent string by matching these strings to known user agents, but I was wondering what other methods there are to do this using php as I am retrieving fewer bots than expected using this method.

I am also looking to find out how to detect if a browser or robot is spoofing another browser using a user agent string.

Any advice is appreciated.

EDIT: This has to be done using a log file with lines as follows:

129.173.129.168 - - [11/Oct/2011:00:00:05 -0300] "GET /cams/uni_ave2.jpg?time=1318302291289 HTTP/1.1" 200 20240 "http://faculty.dentistry.dal.ca/loanertracker/webcam.html" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.2.23) Gecko/20110920 Firefox/3.6.23"

This means I can't check user behaviour aside from access times.

php user-agent bots spoof
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4

Beyond just comparing user agents, you would keep a log of activity and look for robot behavior. Often times this will include checking for /robots.txt and not loading images. Another trick is to ask the client if they have javascript since most bots won't mark it as enabled.

However, beware, you may well accidently get some people who are genuinely people.

answered 2012-11-14T04:03:32.430

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